Trying Some new Anti-Spam Techniques

If you’ve been paying attention to my Akismet counter on the sidebar, you’ve probably noticed the number trending upwards quite rapidly over the last week. Apparently the spambots have found me.

Akismet’s done a superb job of preventing you fine folks from seeing the spam. And WordPress similarly does a superb job of providing a single-click interface to purge all that spam. But I’d really rather not have to be bothered with that.

So I’ve just implemented a quick-and-dirty plugin that uses Tornevall‘s DNSBL service to bar these spambots from posting at all. With any luck none of you will be affected or even notice at all, but do let me know if you find yourself unable to post comments (assuming you have another way of reaching me, that is).

Coincidentally, this is providing a handy lesson in writing WordPress plugins. In the dive-in-headfirst-and-hope-you-can-swim sort of way…